Draped Like Muga Silk

The night was cool and deep, already tired, when Charley Bradstreet stepped into the road.

The streetlight cast a pool of light around him.

His black Italian loafers formed a crux, his shadow stretched away to seven o’clock.

His golden-yellow trousers hung just right, the bloodshot pinstripes shimmering as he moved.

His matching jacket draped like Muga silk, as insolent as a yellow flame, his head topped with a fedora, canted low across one eye.

He focused on the grill of a red sedan parked down the road.

He flicked his shoulders and his hands appeared.

In them was a Thompson submachine gun.

* * *

A half a block away, behind the grill, behind the revving engine of the car, a cherry-red ‘48 DeSoto, Milton ‘Millie the Maestro’ spotted him. He grinned. “Well I’ll be damned.”

He gripped the wheel. His shoulders flexed, his off-the-rack jacket stretching across his back as he pulled himself into Charley’s night.

He worked his foot, pressed the pedal on the right.

The engine revved, the cherry-red sedan straining at the brake, the grill a sneer, the car as evil as the occupants.

Or so it seemed to Milton.

In his mind he was a hero come to save the day.

The red DeSoto, rearing, neighing angrily, hungered for Charley’s blood. And it would feed.

From the back, “What is it?” slipped across the seat, the intonation unconcerned, weary even at the interruption.

“Charley Bradstreet. Charley’s got a gun. Not to worry. I’ll take care of him.” 

And Big Jim DeBlaso spread his hands suddenly, popping his paper open. The story on corruption captured him again. Truly fascinating stuff.

He glanced down to read the final words in the column, dimly black on white illuminated by the dusty lamp set above the door. Inside the parens he read “continued on” some other page.

He mumbled, “Aren’t we all?” and wondered how the current tale would end. He didn’t need another complication in his life.

Especially Charley Bradstreet. Not tonight. And not with Milton driving, the reckless fool. Now Joey Bones, that would be okay, or Mick the Knife or even Frankie the Face or almost anybody else.

Again, he shook his head and looked at the paper. “Continued on”— He couldn’t make it out.

He sighed and shook his head, muttered, “Well, I’ll finish later. Maybe. If I’m still here.” He folded the paper, dropped it on the seat.

His thoughts turned to the meeting in the room.

He peered at Milton. “Hey, Millie—” and he winced. The man preferred ‘The Maestro.’ “What I mean, this deal is big, y’know? Matter of fact, it’s the biggest deal we’ve ever made, okay? Whatever it takes, y’gotta take him out. If I was ever late, this ain’t the time.”

He leaned forward, grabbed the back of the seat.

“I can’t be late tonight. Know what I mean?”

The Maestro grimaced. “Yeah.”

He always knew what Jimmy DeBlaso meant. Everybody knew his love of money, and the broad was rich. Did he think they all were dumb?

But Jimmy couldn’t have a conversation without tacking on “Know what I mean?”

Milton glanced into the rear-view mirror.

You’re such an ass, Big Jim. Know what I mean? He grinned, but kept the thought to himself where it belonged. Tonight was not the time for many things.

Someday his day would come. 

* * *

In a window seven stories up, a face appeared, the thinnest hair in town slicked back over a balding head. He smirked. The scene was nothing new, but for the actors. Bad on bad was good for a change.

The outcome would be the same, only without the good guys risking life and limb. What’s more, his secret would be safe. The stupid moog in the street would die, his gun blazing, DeSoto tracks across his yellow suit.

At least he fit the role: mobster chic.

And two patrol cars waiting down the street would nab the perpetrators, run them in, and pin their butts with a RICO rap.

Unless the Thompson happened to fire straight for once. Then the car would veer and crash, its windshield shattered into a millions shards that sliced and diced Milton and Big Jim, punctuated by a hail of lead.

And on the roof, the sniper, his sights locked on the figure in the yellow suit, would place a hundred-fifty-eight grain slug through the perpetrator’s heart.

The boys down the block would race up, sirens wailing, and fire a few more times, making sure to keep the right trajectory. They tried, they’d say in court, to keep the guy from spraying the other two with bullets. They would prefer convictions, prison terms, for those two.

But life was life and fate was fate and bad guys were bad, always, they would say, even when shooting at their friends. The shooting would be clean, the jury’s hands washed of all wrong-doing, and the sun would dawn tomorrow on a better day.

It was the way such things should always go.

The man laughed. He stepped back from the window, and turned to look at Mary DeBlaso. “Well,” he said, “he ought to be here soon enough.”

She frowned and lit a cigarette. “And then you’ll let me go? I know he’ll bring the money.”

“Of course I will,” he said, as if the money was what it was all about. “Of course I will.”

* * *

Down the street, two patrol cars nestled against the curb.

In one, Sergeant O’Reilly, who had a wife and seven younglings at home who ranged in age from thirteen down to two, seemed relaxed enough, his head laid back against his jacket, rolled into a pillow and crammed into the corner of the door and the passenger seat.

Only the neat round hole in his right temple and the mess on his coat belied the tragedy. He was not asleep.

To his left, Johnny Stilson was more obvious. The rookie lay across the wheel, the back of his head a mess, having released the slug that entered just above his left eyebrow.

And unceremoniously, his cap, which he’d been told never to remove when on the job, lay in the back floorboard. It had not gone there of its own accord, and certainly not with the chief’s permission.

In the other car, the requisite detective lay folded against the dash, where he had gone voluntarily, attempting to avoid the hell unleashed outside his window. He hadn’t even yelled, “Look out!” or anything resembling it to let his driver, twenty-two year old Olaf Svenson know there was a threat.

Olaf looked around as the detective dove for cover. “What in the world?” he said and caught the second bullet in the eye.

It slapped him back against the driver’s side glass.

The jury’s out on whether his head or the bullet made the gaping hole there first.

But they would not respond. That was the key.

* * *

Smiling, nodding at the surging car, Charley shifted the Thompson to one hand and gestured with the other. “Come on, boys. And welcome to hell,” he said. Vengeance was sweet.

They couldn’t take from him what they had taken and live to brag about it. He gestured again. What were they waiting for? An invitation?

He raised the Thompson, squeezed the trigger hard, and peppered the hateful grill with .45s.

He rocked his head back, laughed, and yelled, “Come on! Come get it, y’sorry bastards!”

* * *

In the car, The Maestro shook his head. “This guy’s a nut.”

And Big Jim clapped him on the shoulder, then shoved. “So what the hell you waitin’ for? Go on. Take him down. I told you once I can’t be late tonight. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Milton said, and huffed.

He grasped the wheel again and hit the gas and then released the brake.

The car peeled out.

It surged toward the golden-yellow spindle marking the final seconds of his life in the center of a fool’s sundial erected in the middle of the night.

The Maestro smirked. Hey, that’s a pome if I know pomes, and I think I do.

And that was the final thought The Maestro had.

* * *

Just as if it were meant to be, just as if the sights on the Thompson were there for anything but decoration, the first slug took him in the face. He slapped against the seat, crumpled forward to the steering wheel, then rolled hard to the right.

And Big Jim? His eyes grew wide as saucers.

He screamed more loudly than he’d ever screamed as the car caromed off the curb.

It flipped and rolled, coming to rest on rebar spikes set into the footing of the next business he would extort.

Oh yes, he screamed more loudly than he’d ever made Mary scream as he sliced away parts of her womanhood, just for fun.

Never deep, just the skin in strips around the areola, which he left intact. You know, just in case she ever decided kids would be a good idea.

But the last scream died, a gurgle in his throat as the rebar pinned him like the bug he was.

With apologies to bugs, of course.

* * *

“Aw crap,” the chief muttered at the window as the car below him veered and flipped.

Still the yellow fool in the streetlight fired the Thompson, riddling the car with bullets even after it lay upside down, its tires spinning a thousand miles an hour as if it were trying to escape.

The noise from the carnage was so loud he barely heard the door burst from the hinges behind him. But he heard.

He spun around, his revolver almost clearing leather before the man grinned and squeezed the trigger. “Dis is from Charley,” he said. The shotgun bucked.

The chief never heard the explosion that blew him through the window.

Then the guy looked at Mary. “Hey, you a’right?”

She nodded. “Yes, I think so. But my husband—”

The man drew his finger across his throat. “Charley got ‘im. He won’t cut you no more.”

She nodded, then stood and gathered up her things—a jacket and her purse, her latest hat—then looked at the man. “And Charley—he’s all right?”

He laughed. “Oh yes’m. You know, your brother’s good.”

“Yes he is,” she said, and they left the room.

* * * * * * *